Hardcore Casual

Coppertopper previously asked my opinion on FFA PvP versus set faction PvP, and today seems like a good day to throw out my opinions on the topic and also see what everyone else thinks. Examples of FFA PvP include Ultima Online, Asheron’s Call – Darktide, Shadowbane, EVE Online, and DarkFall, among others. Examples of set faction PvP include Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Aion, and Warhammer Online, among others.

Let’s start with the strengths of each setup. In a set faction system, you are assigned to a side and hence immediately start the game with pre-defined enemies and friends. This means you can get right into the PvP action without having to solo or find a guild. WAR is the best example of this strength, as right at level one you can queue up for a scenario and play as part of a team. Balance is also generally easier to achieve in a set faction system since the developers know exactly which races/classes are going to be facing each other. Lore is easier to design as you have clearly defined enemies and allies, and the story can progress as the devs see fit.

A FFA PvP system on the other hand gives much of the control over to the players, from determining enemies and allies to how guilds choose to define themselves (mercs, RP, specific race/class/focus). Politics become a huge factor, as your enemies one day might be your allies the next, or vice versa. In games like EVE or DF territory control is important due to its relationship to valuable resources, and this opens up economic PvP. Finally the ‘bad apples’ can be placed on Kill on Sight (KoS) lists, giving the player community some additional control/tools.

I stated to Coppertopper that I prefer the FFA PvP setup, but really it comes down to how you design your game. For instance, I don’t think DAoC would have been a better game had it been FFA PvP from the ground up, while at the same time I think a game like WAR is hurt by its strict two-sided conflict. I also really enjoy the political aspect of a FFA system, but again this comes down to how involved you are with an MMO. I would say most casual players don’t keep up with politics, and so that entire side is a non-factor for them. If anything, a simplified “who do we fight” system is better/easier for them to jump in and get to some fighting. Fighting also tends to be more frequent in a set faction system, at least when comparing games like DF/EVE to DAoC/WAR, although the style of PvP is certainly not the only factor to consider when asking why.

MMO history has also shown the set faction games generally fare better than FFA PvP games in terms of popularity. I think a large part of that has to due with the more streamlined approach a set faction system allows, and also because a FFA system is more difficult to predict. A quick look at Shadowbane’s history will show that the FFA setup largely contributed to the games failure, as the winning side would be so dominant as to literally kill a server. On the other hand EVE and its one server has yet to see complete domination, despite the efforts of many, and while DF started with a few large alliances dominating, today on the NA server the world is split into many smaller alliances, each with its own political connections and history, and many ‘little guy’ clans are able to claim property and carve our a space for themselves.

In the land of MMO PvP setups, we know for sure that one style, freeform PvP, works. We also know that another style, pre-set PvP, has worked, but has also has a history of failure. The one major example of pre-set PvP success is Dark Age of Camelot, and many point towards ‘realm pride’ as a major reason for its success.

Before I get into the idea of realm pride, let’s first define the two styles a bit just to set some ground work. Freeform PvP is basically what Ultima Online, Asheron’s Call-DarkTide, ShadowBane, EVE, and DarkFall had/have going. It allows basically anyone to team with or against anyone regardless of any pre-set conditions (race/class/faction/etc), meaning you have countless ‘sides’ of various sizes. Population control is largely left in the hands of the players, and managing a huge empire of players is viewed as a highly prized ‘skill’ itself. This style is certainly not problem-free, but the system overall ‘works’ if everything else lines up. Shadowbane for instance did not fail because of its PvP setup, and games like EVE and DarkFall are better games thanks to the fact that sides are not pre-set.

A pre-set system is one where the sides are ‘pre-set’ by the developers, be it two sided (World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Aion) or three sides like in Dark Age of Camelot. (Nothing comes to mind above three). The idea is to start everyone on a team, avoiding the troubling of joining a clan/alliance before having friends to fight with. The very well known problem is always population balance, as one side being more popular than another creates serious and difficult-to-fix issues. This problem is of course magnified if you only have two sides, as you only have one option for an opponent and you fight the same population imbalance at all times. You can’t ‘team up’ on the popular side, or have a side battle between two smaller sides. Once the overpopulated side wins a few encounters, the under populated side begins to lose moral and down the spiral you go.

So what lead to DAoC players feeling a sense of realm pride, or more importantly today, what ingredients might you need to replicate that and pull off a successful pre-set PvP MMO?

DAoC had the success it had because first and foremost, it was a very good game. Interesting classes, good (not perfect) combat mechanics, and a solid engine to run it all, DAoC had the basics and not-so-basics of an all-around good MMO game. Remove even a bit of that and all that realm pride stuff flies out the window fast.

Beyond just being a good game though, DAoC featured a war with three pre-set sides unlike the failed PvP in MMOs such as WoW, WAR, and Aion (soon on that one anyway, and no, an easily exploited NPC side does not count). At least with three sides, you bring in some diversity to any engagement, and population imbalances can in part be ‘corrected’ by the players when two sides team up on one, directly or indirectly. Moral is also not crushed after a defeat since the next battle might be a different combination of friends/enemies. Even the ‘little guy’ has a chance to win battles if they time their entry correctly, or strike when the two other sides are already pre-occupied. Point being, everyone has options, and as long as you have options, you have a chance.

So when exactly does realm pride start to factor into all of this, and how important was it in regards to DAoC’s success? IMO realm pride was the natural progression of players who were playing a game that ‘worked’, rather than some magic formula or feature that Mythic created and then failed to replicate with WAR. The idea of realm pride naturally builds when you are invested in anything that is going well, is enjoyable, or is worth caring about. Players in successful EVE alliances have ‘realm pride’ for their alliance, just like DF players have ‘realm pride’ regarding their clan. The reason realm pride never took off in WoW or WAR is not because some ‘special sauce’ was missing from those games, but just the general fact that neither game had great PvP to begin with, and so those players never felt heavily invested.

With WAR in particular, Mythic missed the boat on replicating DAoC realm pride because they did not deliver a game that was good enough to get heavily invested in. The RvR in WAR was not good enough to log in and care how your side was doing, or how it did the day before. You can point to the fact that Relics in DAoC meant a lot more than capital city stars in WAR to those playing, or that keeps in DAoC seemed to attract more fevered offense/defense than in WAR, but realm pride (or lack of it) is not the direct answer to ‘why’ that is/was.

It’s tough to say whether a third side in WAR would have outright saved the game and allowed it to keep more of its initial player base, or to at least stop it’s bleeding once the tourists moved on, but would anyone argue that a third side would be anything BUT an improvement? The question that is sadly likely never to be answered is just how far away was WAR from being a great game? In many ways it was far superior to DAoC, yet when it came down to what mattered most, a prolonged interest in RvR, it failed. How many people would still be playing if instead of going down to two sides, Mythic had gone UP to four, or even six sides? Would the topic of why WAR players never felt a sense of realm pride even be an issue then, or would many of us instead be talking about the underhanded move the Dark Elves just pulled off when the Dwarves and High Elves were fighting over a capital city?

In short, creating ‘realm pride’ is not a magic fix or feature that can save a pre-set PvP MMO. It is a reflection that what you have created ‘works’ for those playing, that they care enough about what you are offering to go above and beyond their normal routines and to get more involved. When you’re players start to genuinely care about what happens, you know you have them hooked for months to come.